Posted by A Deadly Invitation is one of those mystery movies made for thriller lovers. It is a classic whodunit where a person dies, everybody is a suspect, and an intelligent investigator cracks the case. The mystery is pretty hard to solve for viewers, primarily because many of the details are held by Agatha until the ending. She is the one who has explained how her sister Olivia died, who are the criminals, and what they did. Let’s clarify everything in this article.
You can watch the official trailer for A Deadly Invitation here on Youtube.
A Deadly Invitation mystery explained: how did Olivia die?
In A Deadly Invitation, Olivia is a wealthy woman who invites a group of selected people to her villa for a special night. She will welcome everybody in her yacht at night; then she throws a curious riddle before going to bed: everybody in that boat has a reason to kill someone else, and maybe someone won’t make it to the morning. Some hours later, she is the one who dies, falling from the upper level of the yacht. Her sister Agatha, who holds a crime podcast and can solve mysteries like this, will start investigating: did someone kill her sister, and why?
What happens after Olivia dies has a crucial role in how the mystery in A Deadly Invitation is explained. Olivia dies in a neutral area in the ocean, and it takes time for the police to decide who owns the jurisdiction. The invitees come back to the villa; they are forced to stay hours in that mansion with no connection (the local antenna has mysteriously exploded). In those hours, someone fires three shots in the villa, trying to kill another invitee. Why it all happened that way, and what will Agatha discover in her investigation?
Let’s have the mystery in A Deadly Invitation explained as Agatha shows it at the movie’s ending. Let’s start from the beginning: Olivia wasn’t murdered; she committed suicide. She had terminal cancer, but that’s not the reason why she wanted to end her life. She did it because she wanted her sister to discover the truth about her ex-husband, Carlos, who owns an important hospital in Mexico. Besides being a famous surgeon, Carlos runs a criminal business in his hospital: he sells newborns coming from single mothers to rich people. He does it by having his staff lie to the mothers after birth, pretending the baby died, and then handing the baby over to wealthy clients who cannot have children.
When Olivia discovers her husband’s illegal business, she understands that she cannot turn him in: he’s too powerful and will manage to avoid the arrest. So Olivia decides to take her own life and force all invitees to stay in her villa for hours. She knew that, in those hours, a baby was supposed to be born in the hospital, and it was supposed to be given to a famous couple in Mexico. If Carlos is forced to stay in the villa when the baby is born, the scandal may arise.
Carlos’ accomplice in his criminal activity is Doña Cristina, who has always been the nurse who gave single mothers the (fake) bad news about the child’s death. Doña Cristina is also the one who fires the three shots in the villa after Olivia’s death: she was trying to kill Naram. Why? Naram wasn’t just a yoga instructor and Sonia’s boyfriend. Naram is Ramiro Manuel Godoy, the brother of the woman who gave birth to Elisa, a little girl who became Olivia’s adopted daughter. After he discovers his sister’s daughter is alive and has been adopted, he teams up with Olivia’s former friend Sonia with a plan against her. Doña Cristina identifies Naram immediately as the brother of that woman and realizes his presence in that villa is too dangerous for her and Carlos: if Naram discovers the truth, he will go after Carlos and Cristina.
So Carlos and Doña Cristina are the real criminals of the group, and Olivia takes her own life to make the truth about their crimes emerge. Let’s take a look at the other pieces of the puzzle besides Carlos, Cristina, and Naram:
- Sonia is Olivia’s former friend; she plots against Olivia, but she doesn’t know the truth. She has nothing to do with Olivia’s death.
- Dr. Figue is Olivia’s personal doctor, helping her with the pain caused by cancer. Olivia asked him to give her a high dosage of morphine the night she committed suicide to help her plan. He has a backstory, with a failed C-section that occurred years before in Carlos’ hospital, but it’s not directly related to Olivia’s plan. He was there to help Olivia.
- Cary is a famous Mexican actor. He has nothing to do with Olivia’s death.
- Gustavo is Olivia’s right hand. He’s half blind (well, he’s not, but we discover it only at the end), and he has helped Olivia in her plan since the beginning.
And then, of course, we have Agatha, Olivia’s sister, the one who solves the mystery and has explained the solution of A Deadly Invitation in its ending: Olivia wasn’t murdered, she took her own life to allow the truth about Carlos and Cristina’s illegal activities to emerge. A case that was impossible to solve for viewers, but that’s how the movie was conceived from the beginning.